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There’s a mystery on display at the Mt. Blanco Fossil Museum in Crosbyton, Texas: What appears to be evidence of man-made artifacts that were embedded in sandstone reported to be 300 million years old.

Curator Joe Taylor recently molded a series of depressions left by four strange objects that left behind impressions in hard Pennsylvanian sandstone – a layer of strata said to be 300 million years old.

The appearance of the objects is similar to modern plumbing valves, complete with hex-head nuts. The site of the discovery is within the tri-state area of Oklahoma, Kansas, and Missouri. Its precise location is being kept under wraps until a further investigation has concluded.

No one knows when the actual objects themselves, which made the depressions, were removed. Chisel marks are discernable at the small ends of the impressions, likely from someone prying the objects loose.

“You can see shatter marks around them,” Taylor said. “That means something was in those depressions.”

The current whereabouts of the objects are also unknown.

Todd Jurasek was alerted to the existence of the impressions by an elderly, Native American WWII veteran. Jurasek in turn contacted Joe Taylor, known for his skill in creating successful molds in difficult locations and conditions.

“I molded the depressions where the objects had been,” Taylor said. “Then I molded that mold and cast it – which gives us the objects’ shape.”

Fossils of sea creatures are often found in Pennsylvanian sandstone, but what were man-made, metal-type objects doing in ancient strata?

“There’s an obvious problem here,” Taylor said. “All the people who say this formation is 300 million years old would also say no man or mammals existed then. So what’s modern plumbing-like equipment doing in there? Either the formation isn’t that old, or man was around before the dinosaurs. If that’s the case, the evolution story they tell in schools can’t be true.”

Go to the WND Superstore now for the best explanations of evolution, including in “Icons of Evolution,” “Evolution, The Grand Experiment” and “Incredible creatures that defy evolution.”

Pennsylvanian sandstone is quite hard, ruling out any possibility the impressions were created by modern-day equipment that sank into the rock.

“You have foundations of buildings made from this sandstone,” Taylor said, “because it won’t sink. You’ve got to chisel it to get anything in there.”

Both Pennsylvanian sandstone and coal seams are alleged to have yielded up metal artifacts in the past.

“But no one ever saved the coal,” Taylor said. “If they found a bowl or bell in the coal, they never saved the coal itself. So you don’t know if the object came from a gift shop.”

The Oklahoma impressions are a game changer.

“This is the matrix – this is what the objects were in. And it can’t be moved because it’s the bottom of a long creek. It’s proof positive the objects were there.”

Taylor is the curator and director of the Mt. Blanco Fossil Museum. As one of the foremost fossil restorationists in the nation, his work is sought out by collectors, museums, and institutions in the U.S. and abroad.

“I’m part of a circle of friends,” Taylor said. “Guys who will invest our own time and money, when we have very little of it, to go do this kind of work. I call us the dirty hands creationists, the dirty hands paleontologists.”

Taylor supports a theory that the objects were buried in a massive flood.

(Image Max McNabb)

“They were made by descendants of Adam within the last six thousand years. The biblical timeline says Adam was created six thousand years ago … and his descendant Tubal-cain began working with metal. At the time of Noah’s Flood, you’d had metal working for centuries.”

He opposes a gradualism view of geological epochs. Instead Taylor favors a catastrophism view, in line with Genesis accounts, which maintains that the Earth was shaped by sudden, violent events.

The flood, Taylor said, caused a massive upheaval. Rushing mud and outflowing water courses carried away buildings and artifacts and resulted in new layers of strata over a short period of time.

Then the abatement of the floodwaters carved out deep canyons all over the world.

“Where these objects were discovered,” Taylor said, “the abatement cut down through these newly laid sandstone layers and got down to the bottom of this layer, then just became a creek. In the following 4,500 years, rains came in and washed on down and finally exposed these things.”

Plans are in place for Jurasek to return to the site with a metal detector.

“We don’t know if there are more objects under the layers there,” Taylor said.

Two other impressions are located farther up the creek, one of which is significantly eroded.

See Taylor’s analysis:

To reach the remote location on private ranchland, Taylor hiked over rough, broken ground, a hike made more difficult by the intense pain of nerve spasms in his leg.

Taylor told himself “You may only have one chance to get this – so you’ve got to just suffer through it.”

Arriving at the creek bed, Taylor first satisfied himself the depressions hadn’t been carved.

“It’s in a corner of the creek that’s usually under water. It’s not something anybody carved. If you could carve that [for a mold], you could just make the machine that would reproduce it, so you don’t need to carve them.”

Taylor hopes publicity will lead to the discovery of the objects’ current location.

“It would be great if someone saw an article on this and said, you know, Grandpa had something like that in his old shop – and maybe it’s still there. If anyone finds something like that, we would sure like to see it.”

Casts made from Taylor’s molds will be permanently on display at the Mt. Blanco Fossil Museum.

“You can deny it if you want to – but I was there,” Taylor said. “It’s in the sandstone. This can’t be 300 million years old. Even if they said it was only three million, are you going to have a half-ape, half-man making these things? No. All that millions of years stuff isn’t true. Man wasn’t inferior the further back you go – he was superior.”

Inserted in a sweeping House bill introduced earlier this month called Securing America’s Future Act of 2018 is the establishment of a new biometric National ID card for all Americans that has privacy activists sounding alarms.

Introduced by Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., H.R. 4760 encompasses issues such as education, Homeland Security and the military. Buried in the 400-page legislation is the new mandatory national identification system in which citizens would be required to carry a government-approved ID containing “biometric features.”

The bill states that anyone seeking employment in the country must have the card.

The purpose of the measure, part of the legislative solution to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, is to curb illegal immigration. It specifically addresses the shortcomings of the E-Verify system, which has failed to catch an estimated 54 percent of illegal immigrant workers.

Ron Paul, the former Republican lawmaker and presidential candidate known for his libertarian views, has launched a campaign against the national ID through his non-profit Campaign for Liberty, including an online petition.

Paul, writing to his supporters, declared the proposed ID card “is exactly the type of battle that often decides whether a country remains free or continues sliding toward tyranny.”

WND asked Rep. Goodlatte and his staff at the House Judiciary Committee, which he chairs, to respond to questions regarding the privacy concerns but did not receive answers.

Proponents of the measure argue workers already are required to provide a Social Security number, which is part of a national database, and emphasize the benefits of curbing illegal immigration for American workers and taxpayers and the nation’s security.

Paul fears the national database supporting the cards “could expand to include American citizens’ gun ownership status, religious beliefs, political affiliation and virtually anything else at the stroke of a President’s pen.”

The biometric identification information on the cards, Paul warns, which could include fingerprints, retinal scans, or scans of veins on the back of hands, could easily be used as a tracking device.

Paul noted that the law would require all employers to purchase an ID scanner to verify the cards, and he fears that it would be only a matter of time that ID scans would be required for routine purchases.

The national ID card, the former congressman recalls, was a key portion of the failed “comprehensive immigration reform” bills both parties tried to pass during the Obama administration.

“Now, using the momentum behind Trump’s tough talk on immigration and border security, I’m afraid the statists believe the best way to finally enact their National ID scheme is by promoting their bill on Capitol Hill as a ‘DACA fix’ while they sell it to the GOP base as a border ‘security’ measure,” he writes.

The national ID, Paul said, doesn’t target any border but instead is meant “to create an all-out police state within them.”

Alex Nowrasteh, a fellow at the libertarian CATO Institute in Washington, said in a FoxNews.com column “a national ID hurts American workers while pretending to help them,” calling a “naked government power grab” that effectively requires every American to ask government permission to get a job.

“American workers shouldn’t have to beg or plead to anybody to get permission to work,” he wrote. “Being employed should be a private agreement between an employer and employee. Period. The government should get out of the way.”

He also argued that “carrying around government papers with biometric identification on it conjures up images of a more technologically savvy Oceania or East Germany.”

He further asserted that the system would exclude millions of legal workers by accident and fail to catch the majority of illegal immigrants.

“For instance, if E-Verify were instituted nationwide 3.6 million Americans would be denied employment each year and have to visit the Social Security Administration to correct their records. The employer either fires them or delays training. Will a biometric ID card make this system better? How does that help American workers?”

He said, along with costing businesses up to $800 to buy a scanner, it “would treat every American like a criminal by requiring them to enter their most intimate and personal data into a government database.”

Inserted in a sweeping House bill introduced earlier this month called Securing America’s Future Act of 2018 is the establishment of a new biometric National ID card for all Americans that has privacy activists sounding alarms.

Introduced by Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., H.R. 4760 encompasses issues such as education, Homeland Security and the military. Buried in the 400-page legislation is the new mandatory national identification system in which citizens would be required to carry a government-approved ID containing “biometric features.”

The bill states that anyone seeking employment in the country must have the card.

The purpose of the measure, part of the legislative solution to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, is to curb illegal immigration. It specifically addresses the shortcomings of the E-Verify system, which has failed to catch an estimated 54 percent of illegal immigrant workers.

Ron Paul, the former Republican lawmaker and presidential candidate known for his libertarian views, has launched a campaign against the national ID through his non-profit Campaign for Liberty, including an online petition.

Paul, writing to his supporters, declared the proposed ID card “is exactly the type of battle that often decides whether a country remains free or continues sliding toward tyranny.”

WND asked Rep. Goodlatte and his staff at the House Judiciary Committee, which he chairs, to respond to questions regarding the privacy concerns but did not receive answers.

Proponents of the measure argue workers already are required to provide a Social Security number, which is part of a national database, and emphasize the benefits of curbing illegal immigration for American workers and taxpayers and the nation’s security.

Paul fears the national database supporting the cards “could expand to include American citizens’ gun ownership status, religious beliefs, political affiliation and virtually anything else at the stroke of a President’s pen.”

The biometric identification information on the cards, Paul warns, which could include fingerprints, retinal scans, or scans of veins on the back of hands, could easily be used as a tracking device.

Paul noted that the law would require all employers to purchase an ID scanner to verify the cards, and he fears that it would be only a matter of time that ID scans would be required for routine purchases.

The national ID card, the former congressman recalls, was a key portion of the failed “comprehensive immigration reform” bills both parties tried to pass during the Obama administration.

“Now, using the momentum behind Trump’s tough talk on immigration and border security, I’m afraid the statists believe the best way to finally enact their National ID scheme is by promoting their bill on Capitol Hill as a ‘DACA fix’ while they sell it to the GOP base as a border ‘security’ measure,” he writes.

The national ID, Paul said, doesn’t target any border but instead is meant “to create an all-out police state within them.”

Alex Nowrasteh, a fellow at the libertarian CATO Institute in Washington, said in a FoxNews.com column “a national ID hurts American workers while pretending to help them,” calling a “naked government power grab” that effectively requires every American to ask government permission to get a job.

“American workers shouldn’t have to beg or plead to anybody to get permission to work,” he wrote. “Being employed should be a private agreement between an employer and employee. Period. The government should get out of the way.”

He also argued that “carrying around government papers with biometric identification on it conjures up images of a more technologically savvy Oceania or East Germany.”

He further asserted that the system would exclude millions of legal workers by accident and fail to catch the majority of illegal immigrants.

“For instance, if E-Verify were instituted nationwide 3.6 million Americans would be denied employment each year and have to visit the Social Security Administration to correct their records. The employer either fires them or delays training. Will a biometric ID card make this system better? How does that help American workers?”

Discrimination against Christian ideas has been handed a big reprimand by the Washington state Supreme Court.

The justices ruled Thursday a former fire captain who was fired for sending emails with religious content through his work account can sue the Spokane Valley Fire Department for damages because his First Amendment rights were violated.

Jon Sprague pointed out other employees used the same email system for a variety of other purposes, such as seeking babysitting and selling concert tickets. There also were discussions of substance abuse and conflicts with children.

But when Sprague shared thoughts from the Bible, he ended up unemployed.

The high court previously returned the case to the lower courts because of unresolved issues over the fire department’s violation of Sprague’s First Amendment rights.

Sprague sent several postings about the Spokane Christian Firefighters Fellowship and was first warned, then fired.

His firing was upheld by the department’s Civil Service Commission. The Spokane County Superior Court then dismissed the case, and the decision was upheld by the state Court of Appeals.

But the state Supreme Court pointed out Thursday that the Court of Appeals declined to address the merit of Sprague’s claims.

“Sprague has met his initial burden to show that the SVFD’s restrictions on his speech violated the First Amendment. On remand, the burden will shift to SVFD to show by preponderance of the evidence that it would have reached the same decision as to (Sprague’s) employment termination even in the absence of the protected conduct,” the court said.

Sprague could be awarded damages.

The agency’s policy requires that its communications systems be used for department business only. But Court of Appeals Judge George Fearing noted health and wellness emails sent through the system were no different than Sprague’s emails.

“To me it seems crystal clear it’s a violation of free speech rights,” said Matt Albrecht, Sprague’s lawyer. “You can’t single someone out with a different viewpoint.”The Pacific Justice Institute filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the dispute.Brad Dacus, president of PJI, called it “a terrific victory for Capt. Sprague, and an important reminder of First Amendment principles.”“No employee should be terminated for speaking on otherwise-permissible topics at work, just because he has a religious perspective.http://www.wnd.com/2018/01/court-backs-right-to-express-christian-views-at-work/

FORMER GYMNAST PRAYS FOR ABUSER TO FEEL 'SOUL-CRUSHING GUILT'Because 'Gospel of Christ' then 'extends grace and hope and mercy'Published: 1 day agoauthor-imageBOB UNRUH About | Email | Archive DouglasBible32Former sports physician Larry Nassar has been sentenced to 175 years in prison for abusing more than 150 young American gymnasts.

One victim lashed out that there were no words for how much she “f—— hated’ him. The comment came as the judge allowed Nassar’s victims to give statements prior to the conclusion of the case.But Rachael Denhollander, the first woman to publicly accuse Nassar of sexual abuse, moved another direction.In court, she told the judge and Nassar that she prayed for him to find “grace and hope and mercy.”“The Bible you speak carries a final judgment where all of God’s wrath and eternal terror is poured out on men like you. Should you ever reach the point of truly facing what you have done, the guilt will be crushing. And that is what makes the gospel of Christ so sweet,” she testified.“Because it extends grace and hope and mercy where none should be found. And it will be there for you.”She continued: “I pray you experience the soul crushing weight of guilt so you may someday experience true repentance and true forgiveness from God, which you need far more than forgiveness from me – though I extend that to you as well.”She explained how she had hung on to the writings of C.S. Lewis, who wrote about the difficulty of knowing wrong when there is no knowledge of right.Lewis wrote: “My argument against God was that the universe seems so cruel and unjust. But how did I get this idea of just, unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he first has some idea of straight. What was I comparing the universe to when I called it unjust?”MORE http://www.wnd.com/2018/01/former-gymnast-prays-for-abuser-to-feel-soul-crushing-guilt/

BUNDY SUES TO HAVE FEDS BOOTED FROM NEVADA LAND'Legislature has never consented to allow the U.S. government to own' propertyPublished: 2 days agoauthor-imageBOB UNRUH About | Email | Archive Cliven BundyOnly days after a federal judge delivered a stinging rebuke to a prosecution assembled under Barack Obama’s administration over a land standoff in Nevada, many of the participants are heading back to court.This time, rancher Cliven Bundy is seeking a judicial ruling that the federal land in Nevada on which he was grazing cattle belongs to the state of Nevada and the people of Clark County, not the U.S. government.Former federal prosecutor Larry Klayman, who has been working through the Cliven Bundy Defense Fund, filed the complaint in the state’s Eighth Judicial District Court.The federal government’s case against Bundy, two of his sons and militia member Ryan Payne this month disintegrated when Chief U.S. District Judge Gloria Navarro issued a scathing analysis of the government’s conduct regarding a 2014 standoff at the family’s longtime family ranch, terming it “outrageous.”“There has been flagrant misconduct, substantial prejudice and no lesser remedy is sufficient,” she said.The charges were dismissed with prejudice, which means the federal government will not be able to retry the men.The same judge declared a mistrial in the case late last month, citing prosecutorial misconduct.Now Klayman has filed a suit against the state, county, individuals and corporations arguing that while the federal government briefly held rights to the land when the territories became states, “the land was disposed of by U.S. Congress to the people of Territory of Nevada.”He cites an 1845 Supreme Court ruling establishing that such lands were under the control of the feds “for the purposes of temporary government” and “to hold it in trust for the performance of the stipulations and conditions expressed in the deeds of cession and the legislative acts connected with them.”Klayman told WND, “A state court judge is going to be hard pressed to rule that the land does not belong to the people of Nevada and Clark County.”The complaint points out that “the legislature of Nevada has never consented to allow the U.S. government to own at least 85 percent of the land within Nevada’s borders; and the intent of the territorial legislature was not to cede the land to the U.S. government ‘forever,’ but to clear title of all unappropriated lands with the territory so U.S. Congress could dispose of the lands to the state.”Further, the complaint explains, Nevada “expressly repudiated federal ownership of the subject land when it enacted a series of statutes declaring ownership of and control and jurisdiction over all ‘public lands’ within Nevada.”It was James Madison who insisted “new states shall be admitted on the same terms with the original states.”The complaint explains that in 1866, Congress adopted an act setting the boundaries of Nevada that “erased any possible prior claim of the United States of America to the public lands within Nevada’s borders.”The dispute began when the U.S. government, charging Bundy owed more than $1.3 million in fees for grazing his cattle on “public” land, sent in armed agents to try to confiscate his cattle. Armed ranchers from across the nation joined him in the standoff, and the feds backed down.They later brought a long list of charges against Bundy and his family, which were dismissed and enjoined from being re-filed.His claim is that the people of the state own the land, not Washington.His family owns 160 private acres and “co-owns all the unclaimed land (public land) along with all the people of Nevada and Clark County equally.”Bundys have ranched there for nearly 150 years.He’s seeking a declaratory judgment against the federal government.

THE FACES OF EVERYDAY 'SOFT TERROR' IN U.S.'You guys are lucky that I don't know how to build a bomb because I would have'Published: 2 days agoTnuza Hassan

WASHINGTON – Tnuza Jamal Hassan, 19, who is a former student at St. Catherine University in St. Paul, Minnesota, says she was angry over American military “crimes.”

So, Hassan, who had expressed radical Islamist ideas to her roommates while in school, police say, went on a two-and-half-hour arson spree at the campus she had recently left, reportedly to travel with her family to Ethiopia.

She reportedly set eight fires across the campus.

“You guys are lucky that I don’t know how to build a bomb because I would have done that,” she told police.

Hassan is one of many suspects and convicts of what might be called “soft terrorist” acts in the U.S. They don’t get much attention because their crimes don’t rise to the level of mass murder, shooting attacks and bombings. They don’t grab national headlines. Yet, the growing frequency of these acts of violence suggest an underlying Muslim rage much more widespread than the spectacular attacks that do.

No one was hurt in the fires, however one of the fires was set in a building that housed a daycare center. Thirty-three children, eight adults and 10-15 students were evacuated from that building, as a result of Hassan’s suspected first-degree arson attacks.

Court documents in the case say: “Hassan said she started the fires because she’s been reading about the U.S. military destroying schools in Iraq and Afghanistan and she felt that she should do exactly the same thing. She said that her fire-starting was not as successful as she had wanted. She said the most successful fire she set was at Saint Mary’s [residence hall] where she set a couch on fire.”

Hassan appeared at her bail hearing with an improvised burqa consisting of a black covering over her face, exposing only her eyes, and a large white sheet draped over her head and the orange jail jumpsuit she was required to wear.Terror is more and more present in today’s world, and the WND Superstore has the details you need to protect yourself, in “Muslim Mafia,” “Islamic Terrorism,” “Religion of Peace?” “Schmoozing with Terrorists,” “God’s War on Terror” and more.She is being held on $100,000 bail.MORE http://www.wnd.com/2018/01/the-faces-of-everyday-soft-terror-in-u-s/

EVIDENCE OF ALIENS IN MEXICO – OF THE E.T. KINDSee mysterious artifacts found in cave claimed as proof of visitationsPublished: 7 hours ago(YouTube video screenshot)

New ancient artifacts discovered in a cave in Mexico are being claimed as evidence extraterrestrials visited Earth about 5,000 years ago.

The finds are weird and a little spooky, with sculptures portraying creatures with large eyes and elongated heads, similar to the popular depictions aliens seen in sci-fi movies. Some other artifacts portray spaceships flying from the Earth’s surface.

WND EXCLUSIVELEADING ISLAMIC VOICE CALLS FOR RECONQUERING JERUSALEMErdogan: 'Ask Allah to restore the al-Aksa'Published: 4 days agoTurkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has called on his countrymen to refocus on the Ottoman goal of re-conquering Jerusalem for Islam and uniting Shia and Sunni tribes for that same mission.In a speech that got almost no coverage in the Western media, Erdogan talked about invading and reconquering Jerusalem, according to an article in the Anadolu Agency of Turkey.“We Muslims lost our aim to head towards Jerusalem,” he told throngs of adoring Turks while in the state of Erzincan in central Turkey, according to a translation by Walid Shoebat. “The water of our eyes froze making us blind, and our hearts that was destined to beat for Jerusalem is now instead conditioned for rivalry being in a state of war with each other.”Erdogan was in the city to promote numerous service projects, but the speech focused on Jerusalem.“When you mention the word ascension, the first thing that comes to mind is Jerusalem and al-Aqsa Mosque,” he said, referring to the mosque that sits on the Temple Mount.The Mount is controlled by Arab Muslim Waqf officials, who do not allow Jews to pray except at the Western Wall. But apparently Erdogan is not satisfied with this arrangement. He told his countrymen to ask “Allah to restore the Al-Aqsa Mosque to be re-owned by Muslims.”Erdogan has ruled Turkey for 13 years, but the increasingly vitriolic nature of his anti-Israel rhetoric proves he has consolidated his power over the less strident Islamist views of Fethullah Gulen, a Turk who operates 120 publicly funded charter schools across the United States, says Joel Richardson, a Christian filmmaker and author of the New York Times-best-seller, “The Islamic Antichrist.”With Erdogan’s rhetoric coming unhinged, Richardson says the Turkish government led by him and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu has essentially become the Turkish wing of the Muslim Brotherhood.“The old form of moderate Turkish Islam has been defeated,” he said.“They have become the leaders of the Turkish branch of Muslim Brotherhood, and now that the rhetoric coming out of the leaders of the regime is increasingly becoming identical to the inflammatory statements coming out of Iran and even al-Qaida,” Richardson said.Richardson said Turkey and Iran are natural enemies, but the views of their respective leaders have converged at a commonplace of darkness – Jew hatred. One represents Shia Islam and the other Sunni, but they agree on one thing: Israel must be removed, cut out like a cancerous tumor.Both are openly anti-Semitic, but Richardson sees Turkey as Israel’s ultimate enemy. Whereas most Bible prophecy teachers have been warning of a revived Roman empire, Richardson has his eye on the re-emergence of the Ottoman Empire, which crumbed in the aftermath of World War I. It’s a theme he discusses in detail in both of his books, “Islamic Antichrist” and “Mideast Beast,” and in his documentary, “End Times Eyewitness.”“For years, I’ve been warning of a last days’ revival of the Ottoman Empire, and there’s no question that it continues to move in that direction,” Richardson said.The acclaimed documentary film “End Times Eyewitness” explores what Christian, Muslim and Jewish leaders in the Middle East are saying about the times in which we live, the prospect of rebuilding the Jewish Temple and the return of a messianic figure in the last days. It’s available in the WND Superstore.http://superstore.wnd.com/Search?search=end+times+eyewitness“This is more than just political rhetoric (by Erdogan). We have to remember that the Ottoman Turks controlled Jerusalem for close to 500 years, and there really is this increasing return of the Ottoman aspirations to control the region once again,” he said. “And that means not only Jerusalem but also Mecca and Medina. They’re pretending to form an alliance with Saudi Arabia against Iran and its nuclear program, but Turkey and Saudi Arabia don’t like each other at all. Much of the Islamic world thinks that the Saudi government is just a creation of Western powers. And the whole monarchy thing has no basis in Islamic law.”The geopolitical landscape as described in the last days by the Hebrew prophets is coming into focus like never before, Richardson said.“The prophets Joel, Zachariah and Ezekiel all described the surrounded nations gathering together against Jerusalem in the last days,” he said. “Five years ago, it was inconceivable to think the president of Turkey would be talking about the need for the Turks to regain control of Jerusalem.”With the Middle East and North Africa rapidly devolving into chaos, Turkey bears watching. As a traditional ally of the United States, it will be given freer rein to maneuver and exploit that chaos. Richardson paints a scenario where Turkey will eventually go to war with Egypt, and those two countries have increasingly been at odds since the Muslim Brotherhood government of Muhammad Morsi was defeated in Egypt.Saudi Arabia has sparred with Iran in Yemen, Syria remains on fire with civil war, and multiple terrorist groups are vying for control of Libya. Erdogan sees all this and believes this state of war has clouded the vision of Muslims from their true aspiration of marching on Jerusalem.The Turkish president called on citizens to “raise their hands in supplication for this blessed night toward Allah to restore the Al-Aqsa Mosque [Jerusalem] to be re-owned by Muslims, and to remove the mist from their eyes, to see Jerusalem in their hands at every moment and at every opportunity.”Erdogan has compared himself to Tariq Bin Ziad, who conquered Spain, Alp Arslan and Saladin.“These are the Muslim leaders who fought Christendom, and Saladin was the one who conquered Jerusalem,” noted the blog Israel, Islam and the End Times. “He wants to declare war on the strongest fortresses to advance his foreign God, Allah, through warfare.”“Khalifat (Caliph) literally is one who rules the world and now Erdogan wants to fulfill Zechariah 12 and 14 where Jerusalem becomes the ‘cup of trembling’ to ‘all surrounding nations’ when they storm against Jerusalem to annihilate all Israel.”Read more at http://mobile.wnd.com/2015/05/leading-islamic-voice-calls-for-reconquering-jerusalem/#lhkzQUS4wPL9GPQu.99

International community can't handle surging dollar, new rise in interest ratesPublished: 1 day agoNEW YORK – With the Obama administration issuing rosy economic reports that WND has reported are based on manipulated statistics designed to show GDP growth at 5 percent and unemployment at under 6 percent, economists worry about the impact of the end of the Federal Reserve’s Quantitative Easing, the buying of U.S. Treasury debt.

“America’s closed economy can handle a surging dollar and a fresh cycle of rising interest rates. Large parts of the world cannot. That in a nutshell is the story of 2015,” warned Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, the well-respected International Business Editor of the Telegraph in London.

“Tightening by the U.S. Federal Reserve will have turbo-charged effects on a global financial system addicted to zero rates and dollar liquidity.”Supporting his concern, yields on 2-year U.S. Treasuries have surged from 0.31pc to 0.74pc since October, and this is the driver of currency markets.Under the leadership of Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen, the Fed has engaged in a “pivot,” shifting concern from stimulating job growth to worrying about inflation, with the concern that without a tightening in Federal Reserve monetary policy, the U.S. economy could experience inflation as high as 5 percent in the next two years, a level not experienced in the U.S. economy since 2005.

In October 2014, the Fed under Yellen’s direction ended the policy of Quantitative Easing under which the Federal Reserve had purchased $85 billion in Treasury bonds every month in 2013, the culmination of what turned out to be 37 consecutive months in a row during which the Federal Reserve bought Treasury debt in an effort to stimulate the economy by keeping interest rates at or near zero.

Under the QE bond-buying spree, the Federal Reserve balance sheet ballooned to a record $4.48 trillion accumulated since announcing the first round of QE purchases in November 2008 just as outgoing President George W. Bush tried to deal with a systemic financial markets collapse.The moves then helped propel Barack Obama into the White House as the housing market bubble fueled by speculative mortgages issued below investment grade collapsed.

Yellen assumed the Fed chair on Jan. 6, 2014, determined to “taper” QE borrowing down to zero by the end of 2014, a goal Yellen achieved last October.

WND has repeatedly warned that a massive downward stock market collapse in the United States could trigger an international stock market downward adjustment if interest rates begin to rise in the wake of discontinuing the Fed policy of QE Treasury debt-buying.With the Dow Jones Industrial Average topping 18,000 for the first time ever at the end of 2014, savvy investors are asking whether the U.S. economy is headed toward a bad case of déjà vu.

After 9/11, Greenspan and the Federal Reserve began cutting interest rates aggressively in an effort to jump-start a badly shocked U.S. economy back into robust activity.“For a full year and a half after September 11, 2001, we were in limbo,” Greenspan wrote in his 2007 book “The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World.”

“The economy managed to expand, but its growth was uncertain and weak. Businesses and investors felt besieged,” Greenspan wrote.Greenspan was open about monetary policy during this time.“The Fed’s response to all this uncertainty was to maintain our program of aggressively lowering short-term interest rates,” he wrote.Under Greenspan’s direction the FOMC extended a series of seven cuts made in early 2001 to lower the fed funds rates down to around 1.25 percent by the end of 2002, a figure Greenspan admits “most of us would have considered unfathomably low a decade before.”

Greenspan admitted that the Fed was aware maintaining these low interest rates “might foster a bubble, an inflationary boom of some sort, which we would subsequently have to address,” but he claimed the Fed was worried the economic slowdown after 9/11 might cause deflation, a worry of professional economists around the world after experiencing the deflation that plagued the Great Depression of the 1930s.As 2007 came to a close, Greenspan was a hero on Wall Street.Investors who had made billions of dollars hailed Greenspan’s low interest policy as the key to engineering an unprecedented surge of wealth on Wall Street.At the close of 2007, those warning that the economy had peaked and the real estate bubble had already burst were being received as prophets of doom whose ill tidings risked spoiling the party.As 2008 began, pundits were predicting the DJIA would climb past 15,000 without much difficulty.

Unfortunately, such optimism was unfounded, as Greenspan and the Fed managed the federal funds rate up from a low of 1 percent in May 2004 to a plateau of 5 percent maintained for a year, from the last quarter of 2006 until approximately the last quarter of 2007, when Greenspan and the Fed began lowering rates in fear the upward adjustment violated the Goldilocks rule in being “too much” instead of “just right.”In December 2007, few realized that month would later be identified as the official start of the most severe economic downturn in U.S. history since the Great Depression of the 1930s.